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VIETNAM'S VANISHING PRIMATES

I NEVER thought my wildlife tour of northern Vietnam would begin in a zoo.

But last November, when I visited the Cuc Phuong National Park, 75 miles south of Hanoi, I discovered that most of the animals I'd come to see -- Vietnam's unique gibbons, leaf-eating langurs and pygmy lorises -- were just outside the gate. More than 100 animals, confiscated from wildlife traders, hunters, pet owners and a restaurant, live in the airy tree-shaded cages and five acres of semiwild enclosures of the Endangered Primate Rescue Center.

Ordinarily, viewing primates is like trying to watch a party in a fifth-floor apartment while you're standing outside on the street. But we were all at street level at the rescue center as I walked along the paths between cages. In one, two baby gibbons swung on boat-hook arms taking noisy dives at their mother. Without looking up from grooming herself, she'd pluck one from the air and tickle the squealing bundle on the tummy mercilessly before letting it go.

Nearby, two douc langurs, with the porcelain faces of china dolls, white whiskers and scarlet calves, fought over food. The loser leapt across the cage and embraced a friend, who soothed it with small, agile hands. Fifteen different primate species and subspecies live there, but some of them are likely to disappear soon.

One-fifth of the world's 25 most endangered primates live in Vietnam, and one or more of them will become extinct in the next few decades, according to Eleanor Sterling, director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. She had told me that it's still possible to see two of the rarest, the Delacour's and the Cat Ba langurs, in the wild, and the rescue center is the only place in the world where they both have survived in captivity. The man who runs it, Tilo Nadler, has spent the last 10 years counting and mapping the few populations left in the wild.

I talked to Mr. Nadler, a biologist from Germany, outside the electric fence of a semiwild enclosure while we watched two white-cheeked gibbons weave a net in the branches and black langurs stride through the tops of trees. Eventually, he said, these primates can be set free in the park when the ban on hunting is fully enforced.

It's hard to know when that will be. Created in 1962, Cuc Phuong is Vietnam's first national park, and it's still a showpiece in a country that ranks 16th in the world in the number of plant and animal species. Today, it's the largest contiguous piece of primary forest in northern Vietnam, covering an area nearly four times the size of Manhattan. Each year, according to Mr. Nadler, a section of forest the size of several city blocks is cut down and carried off as firewood to heat the houses of the people who live around the park -- 500 in the early 60's, 51,000 today.

I'd planned to hike in for several days to see the few Delacour's langurs that live in the most impenetrable part of the park. Instead, Mr. Nadler suggested I go an hour's drive away to Van Long, where the villagers had just opened a wildlife viewing area.

Six of us, four French backpackers and an Australian wildlife photographer, joined forces at the park and hired a van to drive us there. The narrow country road was hotly disputed by all forms of animal and human traffic, and the driver fought his way through with an ear-piercing horn. He left us with three farmers who poled us over flooded rice fields in woven reed boats. We glided along in blessed silence toward a cliff that stood out in the late-afternoon sun.

Just as the light turned deep gold, eight Delacour's langurs emerged from the bushes like a troupe of black-clad dancers in peaked caps and white shorts. Long feather-boa tails streamed behind them as they made breathtaking 30-foot leaps across the vertical stage. Then, as if cued by the setting sun, they coalesced into a line and scampered single file into the mouth of a cave.

Delacour's and Cat Ba langurs are among the few primates in the world that take advantage of the climate-controlled comfort of caves. I realized that looking for sleeping caves would be my key to finding the Cat Ba, or golden-headed, langur, perhaps the rarest primate on earth. Two years ago, Mr. Nadler told me, there were 125 of them; this year he's counted fewer than 60.

They live in a natural paradise. Cat Ba Island, their home, is 137 square miles and the largest of 3,000 islands scattered across Halong Bay like a breadcrumb trail leading up Vietnam's northeastern coast. Part of a rare karst formation, the islands have bizarre weather-eroded shapes and a jewel-like setting that have won them a designation as a World Heritage Site.

The morning after my trip to Van Long, I walked to Cuc Phuong Village just outside the park to catch the 6 a.m. bus to Hanoi. The red running lights of the idling bus shone cheerfully in the gray dawn. A woman with a little boy in a bright yellow cap and Tweetie Bird on his sweatshirt were the only other passengers.

The gibbons began their early morning calls in the forest behind us as the driver revved the motor and set off. The bus swept up villagers and their bundles along the road, and was packed by the time we got to Hanoi three hours later.

I went straight to a travel agency that advertised tours to the ''hidden Vietnam'' and asked if they could help me find the Cat Ba langur. After making some telephone calls, the enterprising young man at the desk shook his head. He doubted I'd see a langur, but I asked him to make the arrangements anyway.

The next morning, a car picked me up and we sped along a highway 60 miles to Haiphong to catch a high-speed ferry. Mr. Dzung from the Giang Son Hotel, one of about 30 pastel-colored hotels that line the harbor in Cat Ba, met me at the dock.

The Cat Ba langurs are heavily hunted even though it's illegal, he warned me. They're a prized dish at the island's two wildlife restaurants frequented by the more than 100,000 Asians who vacation here each year. But if I insisted on seeing the living monkeys, he would fix me up with a local boatman who knew where to look. I'd have to spend the night on the boat, he added.

This idea didn't appeal to me much because Ta, the boat captain he introduced me to, didn't speak English and I wasn't equipped to sleep outdoors on the deck. But it seemed silly to be scared off by a little discomfort.

I wasn't warned about possible danger until too late. As we agreed on a price and I was about to step into Ta's ample 30-foot turquoise junk, Mr. Dzung asked me if I had a money belt. I didn't. It turns out, while he knew Ta, he couldn't vouch for the man who was going along as crew and, once, he said, one of the excursion boats had been robbed. As we set off, I reminded myself how completely safe I'd felt in Vietnam up to now.

The harbor of Cat Ba is the most densely inhabited part of the island. Fishermen, shellfish harvesters and pearl divers in boats large and small raft together in city blocks. We threaded through them until we reached a floating suburb of single-family homes with tree-size house plants and dogs sleeping on docks in front of them.

Ta brought out a plastic armchair for me and I sat contentedly in the bow as we entered a fairy tale landscape of karst islands sprinkled like green gumdrops across a celadon sea. We passed inlets with empty white beaches. The few excursion boats were clustered around Deu Island, known as monkey island after the long-tailed macaques brought up from southern Vietnam and let loose as a tourist attraction. There, people and macaques were mingling on the beach in some friendly interspecies contact.

But finding the Cat Ba langur is not at all like landing on an island overpopulated with macaques. As we chugged up a long fingerlike fjord, the dimensions of the problem became dismayingly clear. The shoreline was pleated like an accordion and pockmarked with more sleeping caves than I dreamed possible.

Training my binoculars on the wrinkled cliffs that rose 150 feet straight out of the water, I saw halong fan palms and the dragon's blood tree, two of the island plant species that have just been discovered -- but none of the monkeys.

As the sun sank, we headed back out to the mouth of the fjord. Ta had made it clear from the outset that poachers hunt after dark with guns and it wasn't safe to stay overnight in the fjord. So we anchored outside near a shrimp farm and the floating shack of a fisherman who turned his wailing boombox down when he realized he had neighbors.

From the tiny cabin behind me came the sound of something boiling, and before long Ta emerged carrying a plastic table and a bowl of noodle soup with unidentified marine life floating in it. It was too delicious to question.

I was busy taking notes when Ta joined me for what turned into after-dinner charades. He wrote his name in my notebook and asked me mine. We settled on Callie, which was as close to the pronunciation as he could come; his name was well beyond my reach.

We were the same age -- old enough to have been directly affected by what the Vietnamese call the American War. He gracefully gave me the thumbs up and proclaimed ''America No. 1'' as if we were a soccer team. We both had sons in their 20's; his three were (hand in the water flapping) fishermen in Laos.

We stumbled along until we could no longer see hand signals in the dark, and Ta brought out a paper-thin mattress and frilly pillow for me to sleep on. I woke several times in the night and noticed a lantern lighted in the back and water boiling. Ta kept an all-night vigil, either to guard against robbers or because I had his bed.

But he was perfectly clear-eyed at 6 a.m., when he sent his crewman below deck to beat the engine into action, and we set off to see what we could find. Nothing, it seemed, as the hours passed.

The higher the sun rose, the deeper I despaired and the harder Ta focused on the cliffs rising perhaps 30 feet from us. Finally, he pointed and yelled at the crewman to slow the boat. I followed his finger and 100 feet up, four black faces with golden-tipped heads looked down at us. Sitting on a ledge, they gave us a worried look -- heads hunkered down on their shoulders -- like Disney dwarfs caught in a game when they should have been hard at work.

Ta was ecstatic. He paced the deck chanting ''Lucky Callie!,'' borrowed my binoculars and summoned his crewman to have a look.

We could have been hunters, but the langurs didn't run. They stared down curiously at the pandemonium on deck and I stared back hoping to learn something about these creatures we know next to nothing about. But all I saw was that their brown and gray coats blended into the cliff and their teardrop heads looked like tree blossoms.

Eventually, they tired of us and jumped from tree to tree until they were over the hilltop, four flame-tipped silhouettes disappearing into the sky.

Watching the langurs leap

A visa is required to visit Vietnam. Applications can be made by mail to the Embassy of Vietnam, (202) 861-2293 or (202) 861-0694; on the Web at www.vietnamembassy-usa.org.

Cuc Phuong National Park is one of the few places in Vietnam where the country's extraordinary biodiversity is easily accessible. Transportation by car from Hanoi can be arranged by such tourist companies in the city as Sinh Café, 25 Hang Be Street, (84-4) 836-4212 or (84-4) 926-1288, fax (84-4) 756-7862, www.sinhcafe.com, and Rainbow Tours, 42 Pho Nha Chung, (84-30) 826-8725; e-mail: cuong@fpt.vn. The cost is about $35 to $50, at 15,900 dong to the dollar. A bus runs daily from Giap Bat bus station to Cuc Phuong; it costs $1.35 for a fairly uncomfortable three-hour ride.

The park has excellent hiking, whether you want an hour's walk to a 1,000-year-old tree or a guided three-day trek to the Muong villages. April through June, the butterflies along the road can seem like ticker tape in a parade.

Accommodations at the park range from small dormitory-style rooms with fans and shared baths to simple air-conditioned rooms with private baths. Rates are $10 to $35 a night, and it's best to make reservations by calling the park at (84-30) 846-006. Meals are available for overnight guests (about $2) but the best food is at restaurants in the village.

The Endangered Primate Rescue Center, www.primatecenter.org, is on the road to the park, 500 yards from the park guest houses. Visiting hours are 9 to 11 a.m. and 2 to 3 p.m. Entry is free but the center sells posters and postcards to help defray costs.

The wildlife viewing ($2) at Van Long is an hour's drive toward Hanoi, and arrangements to get there can be made at the park headquarters.

In Hanoi, I stayed in the old quarter at the Ho Guom Hotel, 76 Hang Trong Street, Hoan Kiem District, (84-4) 825-2225, fax (84-4) 824-3564; e-mail: hoguomjc@hn.vnn.vn. The best rooms are spacious and comfortable and open onto a quiet courtyard. Double rates range from $25 to $30, with an Asian or European breakfast.

Tours to Cat Ba and Halong Bay are available at every tour agency and can cost as little as $35 for two days, including hikes in the national park and a boat tour of the most spectacular grottoes and islands.

I used Handspan Adventure Travel, (84-30) 926-0444, fax (84-30) 926-0445, www.handspan.com, because of its excellent reputation for custom eco-tours. For a car and driver round trip to Haiphong, tickets on the fast ferry and one night at the Giang Son Hotel, I paid $117. Overnight on the boat with two meals cost $40.

CONNIE ROGERS

Correction: August 18, 2002, Sunday An article on July 28 about viewing endangered primates in Vietnam misstated the e-mail address of the Ho Guom Hotel in Hanoi. It is hoguomtjc@hn.vnn.vn.